The Golden Scarecrow eBook

There came a day—­an astonishing day—­when
she felt irritated with her mother. She had during
her walk through the garden seen a little boy and
a little girl, who were grubbing about in a little
pile of earth and sand there in the corner under the
trees, and grubbing very happily. They had dirt
upon their faces, but their nurse was sitting, apparently
quite easy in her mind, and the sun had not stopped
in its course nor had the birds upon the trees ceased
to sing. Nancy stayed for a moment her progress
and looked at them, and something not very far from
envy struck, in some far-distant hiding-place, her
soul. She moved on, but when she came indoors
and was met by her mamma and a handsome lady, her
mamma’s friend, who said: “Isn’t
she a pretty dear?” and her mother said:
“That’s right, Nancy darling, been for
your walk?” she was, for an amazing moment,
irritated with her beautiful mother.

III

Once she was conscious of this desire to ask questions
she had no more peace. Although she was only
five years of age, she had all the determination not
“to give herself away” of a woman of forty.
She was not going to show that she wanted anything
in the world, and yet she would have liked—­A
little wistfully she looked at her nurse. But
that good woman, carefully chosen by Mrs. Ross, was
not the one to encourage questions. She was as
shining as a new brass nail, and a great deal harder.

The nursery was as neat as a pin, with a lovely bright
rocking-horse upon which Nancy had never ridden; a
pink doll’s-house with every modern contrivance,
whose doors had never been opened; a number of expensive
dolls, which had never been disrobed. Nancy approached
these joys—­diffidently and with caution.
She rode upon the horse, opened the doll’s-house,
embraced the dolls, but she had no natural imagination
to bestow upon them, and the horse and the dolls,
hurt, perhaps, at their long neglect, received her
with frigidity. Those grubby little children
in the Square would, she knew, have been “there”
in a moment. She began then to be frightened.
The nursery, her bedroom, the dark little passage
outside, were suddenly alarming. Sometimes, when
she was sitting quietly in her nursery, the house
was so silent that she could have screamed.

“I don’t think Miss Nancy’s quite
well, ma’am,” said the nurse.

“Oh, dear! What a nuisance,” said
Mrs. Ross who liked her little girl to be always well
and beautiful. “I do hope she’s not
going to catch something.”

“She doesn’t take that pleasure in her
clothes she did,” said the nurse.

“Perhaps she wants some new ones,” said
her mother. “Take her to Florice, nurse.”
Nancy went to Florice, and beautiful new garments were
invented, and once again she was squeezed, and tightened,
and stretched, and pulled. But Nancy was indifferent.
As they tried these clothes, and stood back, and stepped
forward, and admired and criticised, she was thinking,
“I wish the nursery clock didn’t make such
a noise.”